Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine will be purchased by a new firm financed by private-equity company Blackstone. The terms of the deal weren’t announced, but a source told the WSJ the deal values Hello Sunshine at $900 million, with Blackstone spending over $500 million to buy out Hello Sunshine’s outside investors, including AT&T and Emerson Collective. Witherspoon and some the company’s executives and investors “will roll over the remaining equity into ownership stakes in the new company Blackstone is forming.” Former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs will run the new entertainment company that is purchasing Hello Sunshine, […]
M&A
Another Possible Sale or IPO Based On Your Content
It’s been a heady year for M&A among internet platforms that feature written and book-length content, including sales of Wattpad (to Naver, for about $600 million); VitalSource (to Francisco Partners); NetGalley and Quality Solutions/Firebrand (to Media Do International); Glose (to Medium); Radish (to Kakao Entertainment for $440 million); Tapas Media (to Kakao Entertainment for $510 million); and Epic (to Byju for $500 million) — as well as the giant sale of ProQuest to Clarivate for $5.3 billion. Another possible deal looms for document host and subscription service Scribd, as reported by Bloomberg recently. They note: “The company has held talks […]
Acquisitions: Open Road Buys eBook Publisher, Wonderbly Sold
Open Road has acquired UK ebook publisher Bloodhound Books, for an undisclosed amount. The Bloodhound brand “will be retained in all markets” with founders Betsy Reavley and Fred Freeman staying on. In a release, Reavley said, “The market and consumer behaviour have both changed dramatically in the past year…. We needed to find a way to expand the business from our audience reach to our marketing capabilities. We are extremely excited about joining the OR/M team, which will give us the opportunity to do just this – to provide the very best in content from our authors to a wide […]
Epic Sold to India’s Byju for $500 Million; McEvoy Sells I See Me
Digital reading platform for kids Epic has been sold to India’s most valuable startup Byju for $500 million in cash and stock. (TechCrunch first reported the two parties in sale talks in March.) Epic says its user base includes 2 million teachers and 50 million students, and was fueled by at least $51 million in venture capital. Byju founder and ceo Byju Raveendran suggests that Epic’s revenues are appoximately $100 million this year. Presumably the platform’s continued growth will be good for the publishers that license their content to the subscription service. Reportedly Epic soon expand to India and other […]
Reese Picks Heller — And Her Company May Get Picked By Buyer
The July pick for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club is Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace (featured in both our Buzz Books 2021: Spring/Summer anthology and our January Buzz Books Editors Panel.) Also making news is Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine, said to be have been approached by “multiple suitors” in recent months, the WSJ reports, including Apple. The company has hired bankers to explore a sale as a result of that interest, and those bankers (aka “people close to the situation”) suggest to the paper that “the company could be valued at as much $1 billion in a deal.” Apparently the […]
Egmont to Buy Bonnier’s Half of Cappelen Damm
Denmark-based Egmont has agreed to buy Bonnier’s half of their jointly-owned publishing house in Norway, Cappelen Damm, for NOK 1 billion ($120 million). The company was formed in 2007 by the merger of Egmont’s Damm and Bonnier’s Cappelen. Cappelen Damm had sales in 2020 of NOK 1.3 billion ($156 million), with pre-tax profit of NOK 91 million. Egmont Books had sales from its other primary unit, Lindhardt & Ringhof in Denmark, of 63 million euros in 2020 ($72 million), so full ownership of Cappelen Damm will add significantly to their size. Egmont sold Egmont Books UK along with their book […]